Bombastic Orchestral Score - your opinion please

I just finished my work on two new orchestral tracks. I tried to get compose a style like in "The Lord of the Rings" (No. 1) and like in "Spiderman" (No.2 - Man I love Danny Elfman .

I had a hard time with the sound setting, because it didn't sound realistic enough - but right now I am rather pleased with the result. Perhaps anyone of you has some more ideas how to get the sound even better.

Both tracks are being used in professional game projects, so don't use them for any purposes.

Great stuff! Very cinematic. All the samples rocked in my opinion (the percusion was the weakest, but still plenty good). Like Himiona, I would appreciate info on the sample libraries you used also. As a musician, I'd love to get my chops on some of those French horn parts in Lords of Chaos.

Hi Greg - well you are right - the important titles we have been working on are still to be released. As always in the german games business there is a certain lack of public interest outside Germany.

All games will be released worldwide though - I think that mainly Spellforce and No Man's Land are the titles anyone of you might have heard of, as there were some articles about the two games in the PC GAMERS magazine.

I must admit, that I do not know if any of our projects are to be released for Macintosh - i remember some discussions about it, but I do not want to say yes or no - I just don't know for sure.

Hey, great sound on both tracks! Ok, I'm not sure if you are looking for music critique or production ideas, but I'll give a shot at both.

In "The Lords of Chaos", I have some ideas for making it even more dramatic. Starting right at the beginning, the crescendoing G->C notes. A common way to make a crescendo sound more dramatic in an orchestra is to delay it. That is, instead of a linear increase in volume, an exponential one. The same could be applied to the rest of the piece.

Also, I think you'd agree that this is a very rhythmic piece. In addition it is a very dramatic piece. You could make some of the offbeats or upbeats accented, I think it'd add to the scary/uneasy atmosphere of the music.

I think from personal experience, realistically the strings would probably be a little louder in the piece. Usually the conductor is yelling at the strings to shutup in these type of pieces and not drown out the choir.

The crescendo around the time 45 seconds is kinda weird. I'd suggest either picking the timpani to go nuts, in other words make it a MUCH larger crescendo and a lot louder; or, you could have a really soft roll with a really soft mallet for a thumping sound with no build at all. That'd kinda give the quiet-before-the-storm effect. Right now I'm not sure whether it is crescendoing or not... I think that could be a lot more obvious to the listener.

But great work on it overall, I really wish I had some samples like those!

Now, in "Castle Siege", my only real idea about it is about the violin/viola solo around time 45 seconds. To me, that sample has a little bit of the washed-out synthesizer. I'd suggest looking for one with much more vibrato and more attack, if you have one in your obviously awesome sample library.

Again, sounds great, and I hope you continue to share your music with us!

That is some beautiful music! You have quite a talent for orchestration. I loved both pieces, very well constructed. I saw on your home page you live in Mainz. Is that the Mainz up B9 from Worms? Not only do you have an incredible talent, but live in a gorgeous city - very lucky ( I used to live in Worms). Please keep us posted, both on your music and the release of the games your music is in.